Friday, August 07, 2009

A selfish thought...

Every so often my father sends me some of the discussions that go on on the various shark groups / lists...below is one such post that he recently posted on one of them:

"Dear All:

A very selfish thought.....

I am glad I won't be around when those sharks classified as seriously endangered will become extinct. I feel sorry for Felix (and his generation) who will be witnesses of the catastrophe idiots like shark hunter Bill Goldschmitt {"Der is still plenny o' dem around") and countless others cannot even imagine.

Because I am a shark "hugger", literally and in the figurative sense, sharks are, to me, the paradigm of our delicately balanced, now severely threatened bio-systems. If we destroy these ancient creatures, we will ultimately destroy ourselves.

Why can't we live in harmony with Nature?...

Click on image to enlarge

There are many other environmental crimes we are happily committing without giving them much thought. Sticking the the shark example, take the Chinese and other Asians - they don't care AT ALL, and keep asking for more shark fins. And since it is very good business, we, the irresponsible, greedy Westerners, supply them, directly and indirectly, with the "commodity".

I am not being an irrational "extremist" (gosh, my trade was very profane and profit oriented; I was a banker all my life as most of you know) but I have learned to care and have become convinced that human stupidity and, worse, human hubris are boundless. So, departing this world with all its beauty and grandeur won't be that painful... thanks to the very species I unfortunately happen to belong to.

And we are so unbelievably narrow-minded that we, members of this shark discussion forum, keep discussing heatedly whether denouncing the Discovery Channel for fueling the fear of sharks, and thus the general indifference to their plight, is "bullshit" or not....

If God created the humans, it must have been with the purpose of eventually using them to destroy the rest of his own creation. Why? Well, I don't know, not even the so-called "holy" father, God's general agent on earth, knows. God's logic is beyond our comprehension.

A Jewish joke: A customer sees his tailor and scornfully complains about the time it has taken him to finish a pair of pants: "It took God six days to create the world, and you needed six weeks to tailor my pants!!" The Jewish tailor with a knowing smile: "Yes, but look at the world, and look at these pants..."

Disclaimer

Please be aware of the fact that diving with sharks can be potentially dangerous. Do NOT closely interact with sharks, touch them, feed them unless you are very experienced and know exactly how to interpret their body language. While it might look easy and harmless to interact with sharks the way we do, we do NOT encourage this type of underwater activity.